Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Today's post is
an excerpt from the first chapter of Los Angeles Times bestselling author Cathy Scott’s latest true-crime book, The Millionaire’s Wife: The True Story of a Real Estate Tycoon, is Beautiful Young Mistress, and a Marriage that Ended in Murder. George
Kogan, a wealthy businessman, was cut down in broad daylight on an Upper Manhattan sidewalk. It's a fascinating read with lots of twists and turns.

A Cool Manhattan Morning

by Cathy Scott

A light
rain fell over Manhattan on a weekday morning like any other. But life can
change on a dime, and that’s exactly what happened as middle-aged business
tycoon George Kogan hurried back to his ultra-chic Upper East Side apartment
with a bag of groceries on each arm in anticipation of break- fasting at home
with his young lover. The late morning of Tuesday, October 23, 1990, turned out
to be anything but a typical day in the city.

On the
busy sidewalk, George, who’d recently celebrated his forty-ninth birthday,
turned the corner onto East Sixty- ninth Street and headed toward his mid-block
building, between Second and Third. As he hurried down the tree-lined street,
he didn’t notice anything unusual other than the cool morning temperature. He
continued walking toward the canopied entrance to the co-op where he’d lived
for the last two years with Mary-Louise Hawkins, a twenty-eight-year-old rising
star in the public relations world. Across the street, carpenters noisily
worked on the new Trump Palace high-rise apartment building. A few blocks away,
Central Park was alive with pedestrians, bicyclists, and joggers as they
coursed through the park’s major arteries to their destinations in New York
City, where the drone of urban traffic awaited them. George enjoyed walking the
neighborhood. He’d lose himself in the bustling sights and sounds of the city.
And this day was no different.

Walking
from the neighborhood Food Emporium, he looked forward to spending the late
morning with Mary- Louise. Quiet breakfasts were how their relationship had
moved from platonic to romantic, and they especially appreciated those moments.
Plus, George was anxious to prepare for an afternoon meeting with his son,
William, who was acting as mediator to nail down an agreeable divorce
settlement with George’s estranged wife, Barbara, and bring to a conclusion the
marriage that in essence had ended two years earlier.

As
George headed home that morning, William telephoned his father’s apartment to
confirm their afternoon appointment. Mary-Louise told him she’d have George return
the call when he arrived home from the store. George was optimistic about the
settlement and finally getting the lengthy divorce behind him, so he and
Mary-Louise could move on with their life together. Also uppermost in George’s
mind was settling the divorce to help repair the damaged relation- ship he’d
had with William, who had sided with his mother after his parents’ separation.

As
George continued his walk home, the usual cast of characters were out and
about—nannies pushing babies in strollers, residents leaving their high-rises
to walk their dogs, business people hurrying to the subway entrance just steps
away. George, distracted with the nagging thought of the afternoon meeting,
quickened his pace when his limestone building came into view.

He lived
in the heart of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, once called the Silk Stocking
District, so named for the attire worn by the rich people who had once lived
there. Long gone was the 19th-century farmland, as well as the market and
garden districts that had peppered the area. Left were skyscrapers, rows of
stylish townhouses, mansions, and the occasional walk-up apartment building.

For a
millionaire antiques and art dealer who had once had interests in a casino and
several properties in Puerto Rico and New York, George lived a surprisingly
modest life on New York’s well-to-do Upper East Side—broadly defined as the
area from Fifty-ninth to Ninety-sixth Streets, east of Central Park. His living
quarters with Mary-Louise Hawkins were definitely nice, although small, with
just one bedroom and a marbled-bath washroom. And while the apartment had a
prestigious address with the coveted 10021 zip code in a luxurious high-rise
complex, it was not quite up to the elite level of Fifth Avenue, which serves
as the symbol of wealthy New York, where George once lived with his
now-estranged wife Barbara. Still, he admired the high-end building that housed
his current apartment.

The
Upper East Side has a legacy of outstanding eclectic architecture, including
George’s pre-war apartment. The facade of his co-op, a mix of limestone and
beige brick, created a grand entrance with its surround and above-the-door
stone molding, with tall arched relief details and shallow columns on either
side and carved renaissance-style capitals. Above that was a heavy, stately
ornamental stone molding.The variety of styles added a touch of grace and
grandeur from a bygone era. As a connoisseur of fine antiques, George
appreciated the artistry that went into the face of the building and enjoyed walking
through the double-glass doorway, framed in oak, with its etched Art Deco
design. What George could not know was that he would never again walk through
that entryway, and the anticipated meeting with his son and his soon-to-be
ex-wife to finalize the divorce was not to be. What happened next, he never saw
coming.

As he
neared the entrance to his Sixty-ninth Street apartment, his face flushed from
the damp morning air, what he heard next was startling. It sounded like an
explosion, most probably coming from the construction site across the street.

“What
the—?” George cried out a nanosecond later, when it dawned on him what the
noise really was. It was the distinct sound of gunfire.

No, no,
no! he said to himself, and then, Mary-Louise!

The
force of the bullets entering George’s back thrust him into a forward dive and
catapulted him into the air; he landed in a skid on the rain-soaked concrete.
He was face down just yards from his apartment lobby. Seconds felt like
minutes.

Coins,
bills, and groceries—a carton of eggs, a slab of cheese, a bottle of milk,
pieces of fresh fruit—tumbled to the ground, along with George.

Sprawled
on the sidewalk next to the wall, with his arms stretched out in front of him
amidst the scattered groceries and money, George lifted his head and cried out,
“Help me!”